Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic VP candidate Kamala Harris will square off in the sole vice-presidential debate at 9 p.m. Eastern this evening in Salt Lake City, and while gun control and the Second Amendment didn’t come up during the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the issue can and should be brought up by Mike Pence at every given opportunity.
As I pointed out earlier today, a new Gallup poll shows that Republicans have an edge when it comes to both gun policy and crime, at least in terms of voter interest in the issues. Mike Pence can target Republican leaners by bringing up the Biden/Harris anti-gun agenda during the debate, and he can expose Harris’ true position on the Second Amendment with just a few simple questions.
Can you give me an example of a gun control law that you believe would violate the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms?
Harris has exhibited a hostility towards the Second Amendment throughout her time in office, even signing on to an amicus brief back in 2008 when the Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns that argued overturning the ban would “create” a right to keep and bear arms. Since then, Harris has repeatedly said that the Second Amendment isn’t an impediment to bans on commonly-owned firearms and magazines and other gun control laws, but she’s never said what, in her mind, the Second Amendment actually protects. Pence could demonstrate that the Biden/Harris campaign doesn’t believe that any gun control law would infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, because they view the right as “limited” (limited to what, exactly, they haven’t said).
You’re calling for a ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines, demanding that Americans either hand them over to the government or pay huge fees to maintain possession of the arms they currently own. How would you enforce compliance with your ban, and what would the Biden/Harris administration do to those otherwise law-abiding gun owners who don’t abide by your confiscation and registration scheme?
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have talked quite a bit about reducing the prison population, yet they want to make it a federal crime to continue to possess an AR-15 or a 20-round magazine without registering them under the National Firearms Act. Under federal law, possession of an unregistered NFA item is punishable by up to ten years in a federal prison as well as a $250,000 fine. Given that “large capacity” magazines likely make up more than half of all of the ammunition magazines owned by American gun owners, the Biden/Harris plan could turn tens of millions of Americans into potential felons for the non-violent offense of refusing to register the guns and magazines they legally own. Rather than depopulating prisons, the Biden/Harris plan could see prisons filled with non-violent offenders if their administration strictly enforces their own laws.
You want to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and allow firearm manufacturers to be sued for the criminal misuse of their products. Do you also believe that Ford and other automakers should be sued when someone drives drunk or steals a car and uses it in the commission of a crime?
The Biden/Harris campaign talks about “accountability” for firearm manufacturers, but what they really want is to make them culpable for any crime in which a gun is used. Even if a firearm that was lawfully purchased a decade ago is stolen from a home and subsequently used in a carjacking or home invasion, the Biden/Harris administration would allow and encourage litigation against the original manufacturer of the gun. It’s a legal strategy designed to bankrupt the industry and cripple the ability of Americans to lawfully purchase and possess firearms for self-defense, competition, hunting, and other protected activities.
I have no doubt that if these questions were posed to Harris, she’d try to weasel her way out of providing straight answers to both Mike Pence and the audience watching the debate. Let her squirm. The simple fact of the matter is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t promising “common sense gun safety regulations” if they’re elected; they’re promising to gut the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms.
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